


February Words 12: Terrace

by LupusScintilla (inkandblade)



Series: February Words [12]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alive Hale pack, Alpha Derek Hale, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Historical, Courting Rituals, Flash Fic, Inaccurate Use of Innocent Fauna, M/M, Not Beta Read, Omega Stiles Stilinski, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-12
Updated: 2018-02-12
Packaged: 2019-03-17 07:24:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13654251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkandblade/pseuds/LupusScintilla
Summary: Derek stood back and took in, finally, what he’d managed to complete.





	February Words 12: Terrace

Derek stood back and took in, finally, what he’d managed to complete. The late afternoon sun was just starting to dip too low to be of use, and fruit bats were beginning to stretch and tussle with each other as they woke for their evening flights. He listened as they screeched their hellos and challenges across the trees around the village and envied them their freedom from his current task.

He’d taken a good six moons to re-shape and prepare his small field allotment — inherited from his grandmother when the old alpha had finally decided to resign herself to less active tasks — and although he thought his looked better than the other newly claimed plots around, he still wasn’t happy.

Derek still wished he’d had time to polish the top layer of stones on each of the five curved walls he’d refurbished. Jackson had been given so many fowl by his parents when he’d started his preparations that he’d been able to give two in payment to Isaac’s father, so that the younger boy could do the polishing instead of Jackson doing the work himself. Derek had complained long and loud to his own father, and this alpha mother, about the injustice of it all. They’d both listened and then asked if he thought anyone in the village, or the next, or even the one after that, hadn’t already heard of the arrangement. Derek had had to concede that he thought it was so unusual a thing that mostly likely those in villages far enough away to not even know which direction Beacon was in would have heard, and then that, no, any omega Derek was interested in would likely not be impressed by it anyway.

It had made him feel better, but it still rubbed Derek’s wolf the wrong way, and even now, months after he’d learned of it, thinking of it made his hackles rise.

He shook off the thought with a drink of water from his new barrel — a thoughtful coming of age gift from his otherwise annoying uncle — and, out of habit, almost turned to walk back to his parent’s den.

He gripped the wooden cup hard in his hand to steady himself, and then reached out to touch the doorway of the den he was standing in front of to make certain of it.

His den.

He’d slept in it a few times already, of course, on nights when he’d simply been too lazy to walk back to his parents’ hearth, and once or twice when he wanted to be away from Cora’s mooning over Isaac or his parents’ mooning, and moaning, over each other.

Tonight he must sleep here, though. He shouldn’t cross another’s hearth until after the Inspection, or tomorrow word would reach the omegas that he’d not thought enough of his own handiwork to bed down in the space he’d been preparing for them. For one of them.

There was only one he’d want to impress, of course, but he supposed that was the same for most of the alphas and betas in the same position tonight. Stiles, the omega son of the head man in the next village, had smiled at Derek sweetly and offered him fruit from his basket the last time Derek had made a trip that way, and then a month ago Derek had looked up from tilling to see the same smile not two body lengths from where Derek was standing now. Stiles had, Cora told him later, been watching him work for longer than she would have thought necessary.

Stiles had seemed pleased with Derek’s progress then, and Derek hoped, as he laid himself down next to the fire pit, over the sleeping furs that he’d worked hard to earn and would hopefully soon share with Stiles, that the omega would be a least that, if not more, on the morrow.

♠

_terrace(s) (n): a series of horizontal ridges made in a hillside to increase cultivatable land, conserve moisture, or create stability_

 

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is from a [prompt table](https://inkandblade.tumblr.com/post/170416154151/february-words-masterlist) on my tumblr.
> 
> I wrote this during a word sprint (am trying to get myself into tight deadlines) and then realized as I was reading it over that the fruit bats/flying foxes I’m used to aren’t something everyone gets to see/experience in daily life. So, if you’d be so kind as to disregard the fact that I’ve just dumped an animal from Australia/Madagascar/Asia etc into North America, that would be lovely. Thank you.


End file.
